Rekindling his love affair with stand-up, Judd Apatow tells SiriusXM about his summer sets at The Comedy Cellar

For the first half of this summer, one of the most regular fixtures of The Comedy Cellar‘s stand-up showcases also was one of the most surprising: successful movie producer/director/writer Judd Apatow.

Apatow was in New York City directing Amy Schumer’s upcoming movie, Trainwreck, which just wrapped last weekend.

Many nights after filming, Apatow made it a habit to hang out with the rest of the comedians at the Cellar, and also performed his own stand-up onstage under an assumed name. I saw Apatow perform several times over the past couple of months. Some really funny stuff. You’d hardly have known he hasn’t been a regular touring or performing stand-up for more than two decades now!

As Apatow tells The Comedy Cellar Show, as the show’s guest this evening on the weekly SiriusXM program hosted by rising America’s Got Talent contestant Dan Naturman and club owner Noam Dworman, he’s not about to hit the road, either. No big Judd Apatow stand-up special in the works. “Just for the love of stand-up,” Apatow told Naturman.

Because when he was a teen-ager, being a stand-up was all he wanted to be.

“When I was a kid, I just wanted to be Jay Leno, or Jeff Altman,” he said.

Instead, by the time he earned a slot in an HBO Young Comedians Special — the same 1992 edition that offered big breaks to Ray Romano, Janeane Garofalo, Andy Kindler, Nick DiPaolo and Bill Bellamy — Apatow already was producing The Ben Stiller Show and earning more to make comedy than to tell it himself. “But also I didn’t really have much life experience, because I was in my early 20s and I didn’t have much to talk about. But now, I’m on the verge of elderly, and things have happened. I have stories to tell.”

He also wished he hadn’t stopped stand-up in the interim.

“I regret it to this day, and so the last few months, while I’ve been in town, everyone at The Comedy Cellar has been nice enough to let me rekindle my stand-up career,” Apatow said.

“Your love affair with the art form,” Naturman said.

“And I cannot say that I have ever had a better time,” Apatow continued. “It’s been fantastic.”

You can listen to the full interview tonight.

The Comedy Cellar Show with Judd Apatow will air on Thursday, Aug. 7 at 7 p.m. ET on Raw Dog Comedy Hits via satellite, channel 99, and through the SiriusXM Internet Radio App on smartphones and other connected devices, as well as online at siriusxm.com.

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